Academy Meals & Parent Pay

At lunchtime, students may have a school lunch in the formal dining room or eat a packed lunch in the formal or informal dining rooms. Eating other than in designated areas is not allowed. Students are not allowed off the premises.

The Dining Hall runs what is termed a “cashless” system using biometric technology. The system involves the capture of biometric fingerprint data. The fingerprint is converted into a string of numbers which relates to the information on the SIMS database. The Academy does not store fingerprints. Once the initial data is taken, it is stored as numbers. It cannot be reverse engineered into a fingerprint. All data protection systems remain secure.

This improvement to the system provides a quicker and more efficient service and means that students do not have to carry a card with their photograph on it to access the system. The students place their finger on the reader in the Dining Hall to purchase food.

In an attempt to remove cash and cheques from the Academy we are asking parents to use our e-payment method to pay for dinner money. This can be done online using a very secure website called ParentPay. If you already have a ParentPay account, with another ParentPay school, you can simply log in to that account and add your other children.

If you are new to ParentPay, you will have a secure online account set up for you, activated using a unique activation username and password. If you have two or more children at a ParentPay school, you only need to activate one account to create your ‘main account’ and then add your other children.

If you are unable to use ParentPay, credit may still be obtained via the cash loaders in the school, which will work in the same way, or by cheque sent to the Academy daily, weekly, monthly, termly or yearly (cheques payable to ‘Torquay Academy’).

Students on concessionary meals are entitled to £2.20 worth of food from the Dining Hall and their credit will be adjusted accordingly.

Click here to view the ParentPay letter that is sent to all parents. Please note that individual log in details will be provided when a student joins the school.

Healthy School PlusThe School is proud of its Healthy School Plus status and meals are served in accordance with this standard. Educating young people to lead healthy, safe lives is a very important part of our work at the Academy.

National StandardsTorquay Academy aims to provide all students taking school lunches with a healthy and balanced range of foods and drinks to choose from. School lunches provide a portion of fruit and a portion of vegetables for each student and there are strict controls on the nutritional content. The standards specify a maximum amount of fat, saturated fat, added sugars and salt and minimum amount for vitamins and minerals. There are also calorie limits which mean that the average school lunch contains energy which is appropriate to the needs of the students.